I’m a data center engineer, musician, and linux enthusiast with a homelab obsession.

Current Job - Data Center Engineer II

I’m a Data Center Engineer at a major cloud infrastructure provider.

Most of my work is in managing RMAs due to the incredibly high hardware burn rate that is all too common these days. When I’m not managing RMAs I’m troubleshooting servers, switches, cabling, scripts, and any other data center aspects to keep my DC running smoothly.

Any time left is dedicated to studying internal systems, scripting, and automation to become as efficient and productive as possible.

Previous Job - Travelling Data Center Technician | Project Lead | Software Developer

Previously, I worked in datacenters all across North America: installing, de-installing, site migration, breakfix, RMA handling, troubleshooting, fiber testing, site audits, you name it. I also ended up leading multiple concurrent jobs for clients ranging from local businesses to leading hyperscalers.

During this time, I built a custom drive wiping platform: I developed custom SMR erasure software from the ground up, deployed this software to 4 racks of high-capacity JBODs, and developed detailed processes to ensure that drives are wiped to the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 1 standard. The software also managed log aggregation, log design, data pipelines, data retention, report generation.

I processed roughly 30,000 hard drives with this setup during my time in this position.

This drive wiping project taught me more about storage media in a year than I ever thought I would learn in my entire life. I’ve also learned so much about networking, enterprise hardware, and hyperscaler datacenter environments during my time in this position and I’m genuinely grateful for the time I spent here.

Current Personal Projects

• Finishing this website rebuild
• Creating docs.mikewilsonstl.com to host all of my project documentation/configs
• Creating a high-availibility proxmox cluster
  • Quickly learned that I need to learn more about ceph to achieve this
• Creating an APT repo for convenient homelab script deployment
• Building a mini-rack using 5 mini-PCs, a tiny unmanaged switch, and a custom-built power supply

Homelab